Consumerism, Eh? The £7,000 mobile phone

THIS did rather make me giggle. A company that makes outrageously expensive mobile phones. Their latest model costing £7,000.

The Vertu Ti costs 7,900 euros (£6,994) and is made at the firm’s headquarters in Church Crookham, Hampshire.

The device had a titanium frame and sapphire screen but was not 4G-enabled, said its designer Hutch Hutchison.

It’s not up to date in the technology, runs an old version of Android, won’t connect to the latest networks and is, given the chips etc, rather slow. But it’s still £7,000. Why?

Because there are a number of tossers out there for whom a gargantually expensive phone is a method of advertising that they’re tossers. Rich tossers maybe, but tossers.

This is consumerism, pure and simple. It’s not a new thing, the economist’s name for this sort of stuff (a Veblen Good) was coined over a century ago. It’s people buying something grossly expensive just to show that they’re the sort of people that can buy something grossly expensive.

On the other hand, if a few people can make a good living pandering to the excesses of the super-rich then why the hell not?